Dog pounds in the Philippines are being allowed to kill stray dogs with vehicle exhaust fumes, local animal welfare groups said yesterday, a practice they say is cruel and inhumane.
The Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) and two other groups called for the government to reverse an agricultural department ruling in June that approved the gassing method to kill dogs.
“If we need to put a dog to death because he cannot be cared for, the least we can do is send him off as painlessly and as humanely as possible,” PAWS program director Anna Cabrera said.
Carbon monoxide gassing is used in several US states and Japan to put down animals, but in a less cruel manner, Cabrera said.
She said in the Philippines it was done by shutting up to eight dogs in a metal box, attaching a hose from a car to the box, and revving the engine to fill the box with exhaust fumes.
Cabrera said it normally took up to 10 minutes for the dogs to die.
More than 27,000 dogs are put down in Philippine pounds each month, according to PAWS, but it said it did not know how many of these deaths were via the gassing method.
In related news, a Philippine court has fined and sentenced 13 Vietnamese poachers to several months in prison after they were caught two years ago trying to flee with 101 critically endangered Hawksbill Turtles, a conservationist group said yesterday.
The World Wide Fund for Nature said the sentences, handed down last week in the southwestern island province of Palawan, could serve as a precedent and a strong warning to poachers from nearby countries who in the past have escaped prison time.
The Puerto Princesa Regional Trial Court convicted and sentenced the fishermen to between six and 18 months in prison plus fines.
The court ruled that only the fines remain to be served because the poachers have been detained since September 2008.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS